


We Are All These Years Unmoving

by harlequindreaming (armydoctor)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, admittedly the Johnlock is only implied, sometimes Mycroft can be a good older brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-13
Updated: 2012-08-13
Packaged: 2017-11-12 01:47:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armydoctor/pseuds/harlequindreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sherlock ‘dies,’ John doesn’t hear from either Holmes again - or so he thinks. Mycroft’s melodramatic tendencies haven’t quite diminished in the three years they’ve been estranged, as John once again finds out. And it seems Sherlock's haven't either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are All These Years Unmoving

**Author's Note:**

> I'd rather forgotten this was lying around my LJ (username aslowdumbshow). Admittedly, I've been thinking of turning it into a chapter fic - I suppose it depends on if an idea for continuing strikes me. Un-beta'd and un-Britpicked.

  
Following Sherlock Holmes's death by rooftop jump from Bart's, it is three years before John Watson sees either of the two Holmes brothers again.  
  
To be precise, though, he really only does _see_ one.  
  
He's managed to get by, as well as can be said. He hasn't offed himself, hasn't gone mad, hasn't turned to drugs or drink or dubious card games. He _is_ much quieter, and much, much less cheerful, and rather stagnant on most occasions, but that is only to be expected from a man who's just lost his best friend and someone he's cared very, _very_ much about for the eighteen months they'd been together and the three years he'd been gone. John slogs through daily life, and if some nights (or most nights, really, what's the point in lying about it?) he talks to the skull or lights up a cigarette, and if most (there, no more lying) mornings he makes two cups of tea, well, progress doesn't happen overnight.  
  
Or over two nights. Or twelve. Or nine hundred and eighty six nights.  
  
But the point is, he's progressing.  
  
In the first year, he manages to move out of the Baker Street flat. He convinces Mrs. Hudson to sell it, but whoever buys it doesn't actually move in, leaving John with the sneaking suspicion that the British government is now maintaining 221B. He moves into a Spartan, single-bedroom flat over in Chelsea and takes very little of his possessions from his old home. Sarah takes him back to the clinic all too willingly; even she knows John needs the work for a distraction as much as for the salary. When he gets home after a long day of diagnosing colds and treating ear infections, John limps over to sit on his bed and stares at his laptop on the desk across the room and hears the phantom clicks of keys typing up cases solved.  
  
Ella doesn't tell him to write these days. She's getting better at her job.  
  
In the second year, he manages to get a GP position at Bart's. Mike Stamford drops in every so often, asks him out for a pint or a coffee. It's four months into the second year before John accepts. Molly gives him a wide berth, and that's fine. The morgue would only remind him. John works and deals with patients and eight months in, manages to chat up one of the nurses, a pleasant girl named Kylie. They go out for dinner and John kisses her cheek before she heads up to her flat. For a week, Kylie brings his files in faster, checks his patients through more efficiently, but nothing more happens and so things go back to normal. John's taken to keeping his laptop in his desk drawer so he stops staring at it.  
  
He still hears the keys, though, once in a while. Sometimes they wake him up at night. On nights like those he slips on a jacket and wanders the quieter streets of London, staring up at the sky.  
  
Once he remembers Sherlock commenting on how beautiful the stars were. Vauxhall Arches.  
  
He stops taking walks at night for a time, after that.  
  
Progress aside, in so many ways, John still hasn't changed.  
  
With the third year on the horizon, John's more or less gotten a routine established, and a regular sort of life going on. It's dull and lifeless and it feels so horribly _lacking,_ but it's a list of things to do, everyday, and so John goes willingly. Wake up, brush teeth, eat toast, drink tea, wear jacket, take Underground, enter clinic. Motion upon meaningless motion and John goes through them all. He's gotten rather good at convincing people he's fine that sometimes he even believes it himself.  
  
Not that there's a reason for him _not_ to be fine. It's been three years after all.  
  
Three long, quiet, aching years.  
  
John walks home one day, thinking it's too nice of a day to spend under the streets. It's somewhat sunny for once, with crisp air that seems to stir the marrow of his bones just a little, for the first time in so long. He weaves through London's pedestrian traffic, tries not to think of who might be feeling the same as him - it was something he used to do, that first year, to make himself feel even marginally less lonely. As his feet beat the paving he decides he'll buy some croissants at the bakery four blocks from his flat, to vary his morning toast a bit. Maybe a couple of cupcakes for Mary, the librarian he's starting to date. He fishes his wallet from his pocket, plucks out his card, and makes for the nearest ATM.  
  
He's just finished entering his PIN when the machine beeps and tells him, _your transaction cannot be processed._  
  
He lifts a hand, intent on restarting the whole withdrawal, when the machine beeps again and arrests his fingers midair.  
  
 _Please,_ the tiny screen reads in non-threatening, pixelly letters, _turn around, John Watson._  
  
His finger hovers over the _cancel transaction_ button.  
  
 _Turn around, John Watson._  
  
The machine shuts down and spits his card back out.  
  
 _Turn around._  
  
Pursing his lips tight, he snatches up his card and turns around.  
  
There is a very familiar black car waiting behind him.  
  
"Hello, Dr. Watson," wafts a very familiar female voice from the open door. "If you'd come inside, please, there's something you need to know."  
  
 **xxxxxxxxxx**  
  
Anthea takes him, painfully and oddly enough, to the warehouse where he'd first met Mycroft Holmes.  
  
The man himself is once again standing in the middle of the open space, legs crossed daintily, leaning on a black umbrella. John idly wonders why Mycroft has one in the first place, considering he spends most of his time indoors and he probably has fifty men on staff who'll shelter him the moment even a droplet dares fall from the sky. It's only a shallow thought, and John loses it the moment he steps outside, cane tapping against the concrete. He limps his way over to Mycroft, and the _de ja vu_ of the moment is enough to knock the wind out of him for a bit. It also tugs at something close to his heart, were he to still have one.  
  
James Moriarty had promised once to burn the heart out of Sherlock. It was in the first year John realized that by forcing Sherlock's hand with the jump, Moriarty had managed to burn out John's, too. There is nothing but charred muscle and singed vein where a beating organ once lay. But that's quite all right, because John's managed.  
  
Or he's managed until now. Now he's been kidnapped and he's confused and shaken and angry.  
  
"I apologize for the theatrics," Mycroft says, straightening and tapping his umbrella twice against the floor. The tinny clicks echo through the space and make John's head hurt. "But Sherlock does have such a flare for the dramatic and he did insist." He sighs, purses his lips apologetically. John has to wheeze a bit before he can speak.  
  
"Does?" he asks, pleased with how casual he sounds, as if this is their regular Wednesday tea instead of the first contact they've had in years.  
  
"Pardon?" is Mycroft's reply, in much the same tone. His eyebrows go up and John thinks, pettily, that if Mycroft's hairline hadn't receded his eyebrows might have disappeared in his diplomatic fringe.  
  
"You said _does._ 'Sherlock _does_ have a dramatic streak.' I, uh, don't think people use present tense to refer to people who are - dead." John's voice does not break on that last word. It simultaneously heartens him and whips him raw.  
  
"I am well aware of that fact, John." Mycroft's smile is even tighter than usual, and he looks distinctly uncomfortable - a rare feat; John knows the man's composure to be virtually unflappable. "And you know that I know. Now, given that I have just referred to my little brother in the _present_ tense, and that people do not refer to the deceased in present tense, what might you deduce about the current situation?"  
  
The word 'deduce' sends a tiny frisson of annoyance and anguish down John's spine and he stiffens his back to stop it from flooring him. "I don't follow, sorry. Could I leave now, please?"  
  
"He is here, John." Precious little preamble before the big reveal; Mycroft's love for suspense - because however much he tries to foist the theatrics on Sherlock, he does enjoy the lead-up, even just a little - has diminished. "He wants me to say he is sorry."  
  
John sets his jaw. His hand clenches and unclenches intermittently on the handle of his cane. He pulls in a long, steadying breath that does nothing for the chaos of emotions inside him. "What," he asks, and his voice is remarkably level, "are you trying to play at? What do you want from me?"  
  
"He says," Mycroft continues, as if John hasn't spoken at all, flipping his umbrella up and examining the tip with vague interest, "that he cannot see you - or rather, you cannot see him. He says you've come to expect so much of him and he can no longer live up to your idea. And he wants me to clarify that everything he's done, it was all for you. To keep you alive. Keep you safe."  
  
"What the bloody hell is going on?" John snaps, free hand closing into a fist by his hip. Was it here, too, that he'd asked Mycroft that very question, when he'd first been whisked away for one of their little chats? Perhaps. John's been trying hard not to remember. " _What_ do you hope to achieve - why are you _doing_ this?"  
  
"Because I owe him a favor." An emotion akin to regret flits over Mycroft's face briefly before it schools back into its pleasantly neutral expression. "A rather - large favor, that I fear he will never let me repay in full. But I have done everything I can to help him achieve his ends..." He trails off, setting his umbrella down on the floor, both hands clasped tightly over the handle. "Even if those ends do not include reasserting his presence in your life," he tells the floor between them.  
  
John opens his mouth to tell Mycroft just where to stuff his umbrella when his phone chimes in his pocket. Too much, _far_ too much like that first time, and with no heart it is now chipping at John's soul. Mycroft peers at the ceiling, affecting faint curiosity, but John can feel the man watching him out of the corner of his eye. John looks down, up, around, at his cane, at his left hand (steady now, so delightfully and frightfully steady) and uses that to reach into his pocket and pull out his phone.  
  
 _One new message._  
  
Click through to inbox.  
  
 _Number withheld._  
  
Open.  
  
 _It isn't convenient. SH_  
  
Look up. Both of Mycroft's hands are still on his umbrella.  
  
Somehow, John doesn't think this is Anthea's doing, either. The words are too close to home.  
  
"He's been watching you." Mycroft breaks the silence with a soft voice, and this time it is not his careful, even tone. It is layered with many emotions, not the least of which is regret, and maybe wistfulness. "Asking me to keep him linked to the video feeds, call monitors, online tracking. He deletes them all right after, but we both know what he does with his mind. He's been hoarding you, almost." Mycroft brushes an invisible piece of lint off his impeccable suit and looks, if for the briefest moment, like the caring, world-weary older brother he might have been to Sherlock had that ridiculous feud not come between them. "It was the closest he could get, after all."  
  
John's phone chimes again. This time he nearly sends it clattering to the floor in his haste to open the text.  
  
 _Number withheld._  
  
His fingers can't move fast enough on the keys.  
  
 _Could be dangerous. SH_  
  
Oh, god.  
  
"He _is_ sorry," Mycroft says one more time, before turning around to exit, stage right. He takes three steps before he pauses and half-turns back. John hasn't moved, is still staring at his phone. He's rather terrified that if he takes his eyes off that little screen, all of this will vanish into the ether and he'll find he's fallen asleep on the paperwork again. Mycroft sighs and shrugs a little. "As am I. But I cannot make my little brother's choices for him. I am merely the... messenger." He grimaces a little at the title. "Goodbye, John." The echoes of his footsteps disappear long after he does.  
  
John can sense Anthea coming up behind him, fingers flying over the keys of her phone, just one more thing that hasn't changed. Another thing that hasn't changed is the way Sherlock - or even the mention of him, really - simultaneously makes John feel whole and hollows him raw. He grips his phone so tight his hand _does_ shake, and stares at the four words on his screen. Sherlock. Sherlock is alive. Sherlock is _here._ But Sherlock cannot - John absolutely _refuses_ to think _does not want to -_ see him.  
  
Chime. Fumble. Gasping. Not crying, no. Please no.  
  
 _I am sorry. SH_  
  
"Dr. Watson?" Anthea's voice rings out over John's half-sobs, and John fancies it is tinged with a little sympathy. He inhales shakily, gathers what pieces of himself he can find, and turns to follow her. He is a creaking, chinking mess of glass bones and blood and skin as he moves, newly chipped and fractured, leaning heavily on the cane and taking dragging, weighted steps. He keeps waiting for noise, for movement around him; he walks deliberately slow so Sherlock has time to change his mind. But no baritone calls out, no swish of cloak or clatter of rushed steps hits his ears, no familiar curls brush up against the top of his head. Nothing. Sherlock has given him nothing but a message relayed through _Mycroft_ and three texts.  
  
Anthea politely ignores John as he goes to pieces in the car. It isn't messy, no, but that just makes it all the more devastating.  
  
When she drops him off at his new flat John stays up the whole night, staring at his phone, waiting for the chime. The ring. Any noise, any flash of light at all. Afternoon turns to dusk and dusk turns to midnight and then dawn is breaking over the flat and John hasn't moved. When the traffic noises begin to greet him, John slowly and very deliberately picks up his phone from where it's perched on the pillow. Then hurls it at the far wall, where it smashes and clatters to the carpeting in pieces. And then he laughs and he cries and oh, he's _furious,_ but he's also sure of one thing: even in returning from the dead, Sherlock is maddening and utterly _stupid_ and a right bloody genius and just - John collapses on his bed, wheezing, grinning insanely up at the ceiling.  
  
Sherlock hasn't changed at all, either.


End file.
